Seeking Alpha by Adding Beta

Just little more than one week of March has ended and college NCAA basketball "March Madness" bracket of 68 teams is not even published. Yet given the events of last few days, it feels like we are already into March Madness. Let's recap some of the events of last few days. Republican president announcing tariffs on Steel and Aluminum. Isn't GOP supposed to be party of "free trade" and isn't America the beacon of "free trade" lecturing all other nations? Resignation of senior economic advisor Gary Cohn - that was not surprise when he lost "tariff" brawl in white house. Elon Musk supporting Trump policy of tariffs with justification that China has 25% duty on American made cars and US has only 2.5% on Chinese made cars (to this point, I agree that there is major imbalance in tariffs between US and China) Trump exempting Canada and Mexico and promising to exempt many countries who will play to his tune. I read Australia is next on ...

Around this time of year, I used to write my blog about Oscar predictions. However last week's announcement by Trump and unknown   Oscar lineup promoted me to write about something which has been brewing since Trump started campaign and finally coming to reality. What did Trump announced? He announced that US is considering putting tariffs on Steel and Aluminum imports. As definition, tariff is tax or duty to be paid on specific item. Before globalization, every country used to put tariffs for many reasons but most importantly for protecting domestic industry. US was major proponent of Globalization and worked/pushed countries/unions to remove tariffs. NAFTA is an excellent example where 3 North American countries (USA, Canada and Mexico) act as tariff less union. It's good concept as long as there is balance in imports and exports among countries. However over last 2-3 decades, it has been mostly one sided equation in which US imports vast amount of goods compared to exports...